Build Your SaaS

37signals started an indie SaaS revolution when they launched Basecamp and Ruby on Rails. But can you still succeed with something new?

Show Notes

Jon Buda and Justin Jackson are building and launching a new product this year called Transistor.

You can follow along as we explore this question:

What does it take to build a SaaS business now? Is all of the low-hanging fruit gone?

You'll get to hear our real raw emotions:

"A lot of my time right now is spent trying to figure out how motivated the customer is to sign up."

If this sounds interesting, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to shows. 

Show notes

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Creators & Guests

Host
Jon Buda
Co-founder of Transistor.fm
Host
Justin Jackson
Co-founder of Transistor.fm
Editor
Chris Enns
Owner of Lemon Productions

What is Build Your SaaS?

Interested in building your own SaaS company? Follow the journey of Transistor.fm as they bootstrap a podcast hosting startup.

Justin:

Back in 2004, 37 signals started an indie SaaS revolution when they launched Basecamp and Ruby on Rails. Since then, thousands of entrepreneurs, developers, designers and product people have tried to capture some of that success by launching their own web apps. But that was back then. What does it take to launch a software as a service business in 2018? Well, my name is Justin Jackson.

Justin:

And along with my buddy, Jon Buda, we are building and launching a new SaaS product this year called transistor.fm. And we want to invite you to follow along with us as we explore that question. What does it take to build a SaaS business now? Has all of the low hanging fruit, all the easy apps, are they all gone? What worked for Basecamp back in 2004?

Justin:

Will that work now in 2018? Here's a little sneak peek of what you might expect in our podcast. A lot of me right now is just trying to figure out how motivated is the customer to sign up.

Jon:

Right. It it it's not like you're buying a thing that you get. It's like you have to you have to, like, know you wanna start a podcast. It it's easy to record audio, obviously, but it's, like, kind of a big I don't know. It's a big step to be like, I wanna sign up for a podcast and do it.

Jon:

But maybe maybe it's like a lot of other things where, like, if you find the right tool and you sign up for it and get your thing, that kinda motivates you to to do it.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Obviously, if you take the Cards Against Humanity example, they're sitting in a meeting, and they're going, we've already committed to doing a podcast. Now we need a place to host it.

Justin:

And so their motivation is very high. Like...

Jon:

Yeah.

Justin:

You know, go out, find a place to host this, solve that problem. Yeah. And so once they've decided, it's it's, you know, they need to figure it out then. Right? They may have even recorded audio at that point, but I want I guess the question is I wonder if there's tricks before that where you can say, you know, have you ever thought about starting a podcast?

Justin:

Everyone has. So if like you were kind of alluding to, if all of a sudden they have a page set up with their first episode and they can see it live. Does that then motivate them? Does that increase their motivation to pay? What really got me thinking about this was Valentine's Day because I was thinking I was at Safeway buying flowers and it was my second time.

Justin:

So I bought my wife flowers on 13th, you know, big bouquet and then I was like, Oh, I should just get her a little thing for the office. And so I went back and I bought flowers again, and I was thinking, Think about how motivated I am. Like my motivation is so high. And then I was thinking about my usual trips to Safeway, and I'm like looking for deals. I'm looking to try to save $5, you know, on my whole bill.

Justin:

But I went and without even thinking about it, like, not it it my motivation was so high. I spent, you know, $45 just like that. Like, there was no even Right. Overcoming the any sort of friction, and it's just a different mindset when it comes to food. I'm motivated to have the lowest price, Right?

Justin:

Like people complain if a loaf of bread is more than a couple bucks. But when it comes to Valentine's Day, it's the same store I'm willing to, like, jump so far.

Jon:

Right.

Justin:

It seems like there's an analog when it comes to software products. What are the software products where you're just like, okay. That's it. I just gotta pay for this thing. I need it now.

Jon:

Right. I mean, we're like we're like sitting sitting here talking about intercom and how we don't wanna pay $50 a month.

Jon:

Mhmm.

Jon:

And it's, yeah, it's very similar. Whereas there's certain things you're like, yeah. I'll pay for that.

Justin:

Yeah. And thinking about what increases motivation, if we went to a conference and we sat next to someone and they're like, listen, intercom is the best. And they opened up their laptop, and they showed us all the cool things they were doing with that, and they showed us how we might be that might increase our motivation to go, you know what? We're gonna sign up for this because we saw the the dream or whatever. So, motivation is a weird thing because it can be affected by emotion.

Justin:

Actually, I guess it's really emotional. Valentine's Day is really emotional, but buying bread is not that emotional. And unfortunately, the only way to figure it out is to put a price on something and see how willing, like, how hard is it to get people to pay for it. So if that sounds good to you, head over to saas. That's saas.transistor as we figure out what it takes to build a web app in 2018.